Robert Pattinson Reveals What Ballsy Cosmopolis Director David Cronenberg Asked Him to Do

David Cronenberg is known for taking major risks in his movies — especially risks related to sex, violence, and nudity. (If you’ve seen Eastern Promises, A Dangerous Method, or A History of Violence, you know what we mean.)

The director wasn’t about to change his ways for Cosmopolis, a movie based on the Don DeLillo novel of the same name about a billionaire financier driving around Manhattan in a limo as his business empire collapses and a killer pursues him.

Star Robert Pattinson revealed one of David’s odder requests to Metro France (via People) while at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, where Cosmopolis is in competition.

In the opening scene, a doctor examines R-Pattz’s prostate. “Five minutes before we filmed, David told me, ‘I want to see the bottom of your balls on the top of the frame,’” Robert spilled. “At the moment, I pictured myself saying I would do anything for him. And I had to go see him to explain that it wasn’t going to be possible.”

David reportedly took it well, but R-Pattz assured the French publication that the scene is still super strange. “[I]t’s a very, very bizarre scene that you won’t be ready to see again in a movie, I promise.”

During the film’s pre-premiere press conference on Friday, May 25, Robert admitted that he was more than a little intimidated before filming started. “I spent two weeks in a hotel room worrying and confusing myself,” he explained. Giggling his way through many if his answers, he at one point joked apologetically, “Actors aren’t supposed to be intelligent. I feel like I’m making an idiot of myself.”